I am the Seventyfirst
by pseudonympha
Summary: Vision blurring and heart pounding, I faintly hear the sound of a gong. Just as a voice begins to echo around the arena, the world spins and I collapse into an unconscious heap in the crimson snow. My name is Fynna Havenscale. I am the seventy-first and this, unfortunately, is my Hunger Games. In desperate need of SYOT!
1. Prologue: The Winner

Prologue

Stage lights. Bright, blinding, burning. My eyes blink away their blurriness as I take long deliberate strides across the overly lit stage. Blink, step, breathe in. Blink, step, breathe out. I continue this process in hope that I make it to the bright green figure that hovers excitedly at the other end of this stage. There is a crowd, a rather large one at that, which calls out one word. A name. My name. I take no notice as I have finally reached the disturbingly green character, his smile washed out as all I can focus on are his emerald cufflinks.

My mind seems to resurface in this senseless scene as the man's hand meets my newly bronzed one. I frown at the odd color and strange smoothness of my flesh. Instinctively I know that it should be pale, covered in fine pink scars from my days in the factory, and yet here is it. Beautiful, but completely alien. Suddenly the jade man raises our hands high above our heads, so high that he pulls on the muscles in my arm and I am forced to stand on my toes, no easy feat in the ridiculous shoes with the high heel and flamboyant ruby spikes that my stylist has admiringly anchored to my feet, lest I risk toppling over.

I jump as the man speaks, his voice light and sincere, as he whispers into my ear. "Congratulations. Just so you know, I was rooting for you right from the beginning." Then he turns towards the anxious crowd, his voice now loud enough to echo across the auditorium. "Ladies and gentlemen of the nation of Panem, I have the highest honor of introducing you to this year's winner of the 71st Hunger Games, _Fynna Havenscale_!"

Surreally I realize that it is my name that tumbles from his lips. Not the name of the vicious beauty from District 1 who had run me through with her sword. Not the name of the boy, no, monster from District 2 who I had seen grimly devour the heart of another tribute. Nor was it the name of the burly male from District 4 that had rushed to strangle the life out of me the moment we were able to move from our starting plates. Against all odds it was mine.

The crowd goes wild and I even catch sight of a few who faint as my name fills the auditorium. The guidance my mentor had offered me that morning that seemed so long ago, the morning before my first interview, suddenly fills my mind: _Charming, Fynna. If you can do nothing else, attempt to be charming._ Despite my best efforts, my free hand refuses to wave and my legs refuse to curtsy. My brow furrows the slightest bit, not enough for the cameras to even pick up, as I attempt to will a smile onto my face. Alas, only one side of my mouth cooperates, and I am forced to settle for a smirk that pulls up one side of my face. Glancing at myself on one of the enormous screens that adorn the room, I appear as if I had just caught whiff of something rather foul smelling. Oh yes, I am the real charmer.

My arm is lowered, and I am guided into a white throne by my congratulator just several paces behind us. Once settled in my seat, I turn toward the green man perched in the dome chair beside me.

With a nod towards him, I speak for the first time that evening, "Thank you, Caesar."

Caesar claps his hands as he is able to conjure the smile I am unable to, his green brows rise in mirth. "The pleasure is all mine, Fynna. Now, I'm sure that you have much to say, and likewise, I, as well as many of Panem's citizens, have quite a few questions we are simply dying," He paused to let the crowd laugh at his morbid humor. Death. HA HA. "to ask. But! First, we must watch a quick recap of your Hunger Games."

The crowd cheers again. I cringe, not from the raucous noise rising in decibel by the moment, but from Caesar's seemingly innocent statement. _'__**Your**__ Hunger Games.'_ Nausea flips in my stomach as I come to terms that this particular set of gruesome games will forever have my name branded on them.

Noticing that Caesar had paused for my assent, I attempted to make what seemed like an amiable acquiescence, "Of course." Naturally, it came out as more of a dark, almost dreary, mutter.

The blinding lights finally dim and a monitor lowers from the high ceiling to rest several feet before my eyes. It flickers to life. I see the industrious setting of my home district, feeling slightly comforted by the sight of walkways made of russet dirt, cement tenement blocks, and the hazy smoke rising from the chimneystacks of the textile mills in District 8.

I sit back preparing to relive the worst sequence of days in my entire life. Abruptly five weeks are drawn back into the whirl of time.

Once again it is Reaping Day. My Reaping Day.

* * *

**A/N: Well, there you have it, the prologue. I promise longer chapters are soon to come! If you would, please review. Thank you for reading! Toodlepip. :) **


	2. Part One: Chapter One

Part One "VOLUNTEER" – Chapter One

Morning. I take in the warming sight of the sunbeams that trickle in through the open slot, the one that the Peacekeepers deposit our weekly work schedules into, carved out of the iron door to the tenement flat I share with my family. I find it strange how, as a child, I would once gaze upon those crystals of sunlight from my pallet pushed against the far wall, in the very same spot I lay curled on my side now coincidently, feeling rejuvenated that it was the start of a new day. That was, of course, before I turned twelve. Now the sight merely set my stomach into knots, a thick blanket of deep running dread encasing me in a tight cocoon.

My eyes wander the room and I am not surprised to find I am not the only one wake at this early hour. Living in a flat with eight others, at least two of us are bound to be awake at all times. I stare across the small room at the tiny figure huddled into their very own pallet. A small pair of pea green eyes, the perfect shade to match my own, look back at me before speedily squeezing shut to feign sleep. I shift my gaze away to take in the sunbeams once more before I accept the fact that I must rise and prepare for the long day ahead.

I emerge from my prone position, chucking off my lone ratty blanket as well as my foreboding sense of dismay. Running a hand through my short unkempt locks, I decide to quickly wash myself before any of the others awaken. Precariously, I trapeze my way through the small den, being extra cautious not to disturb the sleeping bodies strewn across the floor. Someone rolls over in their sleep, and despite the fact that their face is covered in a thin duvet, I know it is my younger cousin, Mikas, the fitful sleeper of the family. The slight movement nearly topples me over, but, with luck, I regain my balance and am able to make it to the curtain that divides the washroom from the den with no further trouble.

Pushing the fabric aside, I slip into the minimal space that only provides the room for a solid metal toilet, pitcher and basin for a quick rinse, and the wooden dresser my father had obstinately forced into the corner. Forgoing the wash for a few moments, I throw myself to my knees in front of the dresser, and with the ease of many practices, I slide the dresser to the side, just far enough to reveal a hole in the cement wall, one only wide enough to fit my three thin fingers through. Before I am able to make another movement I hear the scraping of what I know is a tin tub from the other side of the wall, and suddenly light filters in through the hole.

I bend down, my eye leveling with the hole, to peer at, my brow furrowing in annoyance, the crotch of someone's khaki pants. Irritated, I let a grumble fall from my lips, "Are you going to bend down to have a conversation with me, Gryfe, or am I to stare at your crotch for the rest of the morning?"

There is rustling and flurry of motion before a dark brown eye, one I recognized to be none other than that of my closest friend, peeps through the hole. A tenor voice follows, "I see that you are as cheerful as you always are in the early hours, Fynna."

My scowl deepens. "I see that you are as exasperating as you always are in the early hours, Gryfe." I sourly retort.

The brown eye rolls. "Tsk, tsk. It seems someone is extra tart this morning."

"Do you expect something else from me?" My hands wave wildly at my sides despite the fact that I know that the boy on the other side of the wall cannot see my incensed gesture. "Really, after knowing me for nearly the entirety of your life, you anticipate that I will be skipping down the road?"

A scoff reaches my ears. "No," he affirms. "but there is no harm in hoping for a sight as interesting as that, now is there?"

My lips purse in displeasure. "There is every harm in hoping, Gryfe. I would think that the world we live in should have taught you that."

There is a long pause, so long that I almost push the dresser back into place and leave, before Gryfe speaks again, this time his voice coated with concern rather than amusement. "Fynna…how many times?"

He does not have to fully voice his question for me to know that he is asking how many white slips marked with the words Fynna Havenscale will reside in that blasted glass ball. The very balls that will determine two children's fate, a boy and a girl, sending the two climbing upon the half-baked piece of metal that the Capitol calls a stage in town square. The two will gape at one another knowing, without a doubt, that one, if not both, of them would be reduced to nothing more than a slain corpse in a few short weeks' time, cursing the day they signed up for extra tesserae.

I do not need to calculate the number, for it sits like a dry piece of leather, not so unlike the type we are forced to suck on in the winter when food becomes too scarce, on my tongue. I sit back, muttering a rather surly, "Forty-five."

A swear and then, "Fy, does your father know about this?"

My head gives a swift shake before realizing I must voice my decline. "…I could not bear to tell him. He thinks that we are receiving extra tesserae for the overtime hours I have been putting in at the factory."

"That's what he thinks or that's what he has been told?" A flash of light suddenly reenters the hole, informing me that Gryfe has readjusted his position.

A few seconds pass before I acquiescence, "A bit of both really."

I can tell that Gryfe wants to say more, perhaps berate me for the blatant fallacies I have fabricated to disillusion my father of the true danger I am in this reaping day, but a scuffling behind the wall cuts him short. His next words are rushed and matter-of-fact, "My sister is awake. Now don't do any of that skipping you were talking about earlier without me there to die of laughter, all right? I'll see you at the reaping."

Then he is gone, the hole once again blocked by a tin tub on his side. I follow suit pushing the dresser back into place before I hastily begin my true reason for coming in here by wetting a cloth and vigorously scrubbing my entire body. Once I have rid the dirt from every surface of my skin, even the forever mud-caked bottoms of the soles of my feet, I rush to the top drawer of the dresser, pulling it open to reveal my threadbare clothing. I shed the nightdress I wear, neatly folding it and placing it at the front of drawer, in favor for the simple, but clean, yellow button-up shirt and burgundy skirt I declare to be my least raggedy outfit, and therefore, my reaping clothes. I quickly dress, the shirt a bit snug as I slide it over my shoulder blades, the stitching in the front a tad wonky as I had sewn this very shirt for myself just before my first reaping over three years ago.

Dressed at about as presentable as I could get, I pull back the curtain separating me from the den revealing the once sleepy room to now be a flurry of fast action and hushed voices. I watch silently as dark heads, their black hair not unlike my own, rush around the room, when the single blonde in the group glances up at my scrawny figure. His thick eyebrows rise nearly to his gently receding hairline, his mouth forming an astonished 'O.'

"Fynna!" The middle-aged man calls to me over the din once he rids himself of his initial shock. "I thought you had already left for the town square." – a relieved smile then crosses his face — "I am glad to see otherwise."

I nod slowly. "I was just about to. Though I thought that I would have Maeve accompany me."

At the sound of her name, a young woman appears next to me. Despite my earlier drear, I somehow manage to conjure up a smile as she beams down at me from her slightly taller height. She says nothing, but I know by her spirited bouncing that she is excited to walk with me. She is quickly steered into the washroom by a figure that emerges from my left, by the slight low grumbling I can determine that it is my younger brother, Rouen.

My eyes trail back to the green gaze of the man that stands before me, the sincere smile still sits on his face though I can tell tears just barely prick his eyes. I am caught somewhere between the warm fuzzies and frustration at the emotional showing that this man gives off every year before the reaping.

Without warning, he has gathered me into his arms, whispering gently in my ear, "Just in case I do not see you before the reaping, know that I love you. I am a proud father." And then I am released, left to gain my balance.

I nod once more as Maeve bursts into the room, her white reaping dress sloppily hanging off of one shoulder. She makes a quick dash for the front door, her pale hand firmly grasping my wrist along the way as she all but drags me out of our family flat. Once clear of the doorframe, the young woman stops short as if remembering something before she turns back to look through the slowly closing door.

"Bye bye, Papa! I love you!" Maeve calls to the blonde man who has just observed us flash across the room.

His eyes crinkle slightly as the gesture. "I love you, too. Goodbye, Maeve." He nods towards me as well. "Fynna."

Maeve takes a moment to glow at the comment, and then she whisks me down the stairs of our tenement block and out into the neighborhood. She finally relinquishes her hold on my wrist in favor of skipping in the early morning sunlight. Dust rises up from the russet-colored dirt road with her every leap.

I gaze at her, dipping into mild concentration as I watch the young woman I call my sister dance before my eyes. Maeve, the oldest yet youngest of all my siblings. I'm not quite sure when it was that I became aware of her condition, that she was unlike the rest of us. She is three years older than I, and yet so many years behind mentally. Though despite her mental handicap, I can fervently say that she is beautiful. Her laugh is clear like the ripple of water, a pureness that I can hear even over the loud roar of machinery when she, accompanied by Rouen, comes to retrieve me from the textile factory. Maeve has always been well-liked by the citizens of District 8, and I find that I can rely on many of them to watch after her when she cannot be kept within my watchful gaze, for they too have fallen in love with her purity. Sincerity is rare in our times, after all.

We slowly make our way into town, Maeve twirling several paces ahead of me the entire journey. The huge piece of scrap metal that is welded together to be a stage each year has already been erected in the middle of town square, the sections roping off the children by age and gender are currently being placed in front of it. The older sections have been completed, and my eyes wander over the group of girls in the last few years of their reaping days. I sigh. How I long to be in the front row that dictates the final year of one's reaping. I must stop my wishful thoughts here. Longing leads to hoping and hoping leads to hurting. Acceptance, undoubtedly, is the best route to take. Relenting to this theory, I give my head a subtle shake and guide Maeve to the section that contains the other eighteen-year-old girls that greet her warmly. This is Maeve's last reaping; I must remind myself to be thankful for at least that.

I sign in for both my sister and I at the Peacekeeper station, fully planning on making my way over to the section that had just been erected, the one dictated to fifteen-year-old girls, when I collide with another body. I am sent sprawling on the ground, ready to shoot a fierce glower at my offender, but am instead assaulted with a wave of flustered apologies.

"Oh my, I am so terribly sorry! Are you all right? Forgive me; I was distracted when I should not have been. Oh, I knew that I should not have been cloud gazing as I walked…" A dreamy voice floats to my ears.

Picking myself up from the dirt, I lock eyes on the girl who sits before me, her hands clasped in a pleading manner before her chest with her large eyes searching mine for forgiveness. I take a moment to examine her long wild locks of curly platinum blonde before a name arose in my mind. Lorelei Neemer. She is the daughter of the District's factory supervisor. I had seen her from time to time when we were younger, trailing behind her father as he did his monthly supervision of Factory 2. Truly, I have always resented the girl, how she would waltz her way into Factory 2, the one I had worked in since I was eight years old, and leave at any time she so pleased.

My eyes trail to Lorelei's hands, marveling at her smoothness. She had never worked a day in her life. Instead of continuing to scrutinize her skin, my eyes look to my own hands taking in their roughness, how they were crisscrossed with pale pink scars from my time working the press machine at the factory, my eyes narrowing cynically at the missing top digit on one of the fingers that I had lost to a spooling wheel accident when I was ten.

"It is fine. I am fine." I mutter.

I refuse to look at her again, but I can tell by her relieved reply that Lorelei is smiling. "Oh, thank goodness."

Suddenly a shadow covers us. "Is there something interesting on the ground? You know how I hate to miss interesting things since they so rarely happen around here."

My gaze shifts upwards at the voice, glaring slightly at the figure standing over us. I greet his lazy smirk unenthusiastically. "Gryfe."

"Salutations, my good friend." Gryfe replies with a flourish before catching sight of Lorelei. "Oh? You made a new friend? I'm so proud! Fynna has so few friends that I was beginning to believe that she would be forever alone if I were to die in a freak spooling accident." He continues to tease, pretending to tear up at the notion.

"No." I deadpan pulling myself to my feet. "It was nothing more than an accident. Let's go."

Wrapping an arm around my shoulder, Gryfe began to lead me towards my roped off section, but not before throwing a wave back at Lorelei. "Goodbye, new friend of Fynna! May we meet again under better circumstances!"

I do not look back to see her reply.

We hadn't made it three steps before I elbow the boy next to me in the gut. "You are an ass."

"But, I am your favorite kind of ass." Is the great retort that he gives as he clutches his newly bruised ribs. I take mild satisfaction in knowing that I had swiftly delivered my revenge.

Entering the group of other fifteen-year-old girls, I could not help the slight smirk or the affirmation that followed it. "Indeed, you are. In fact, I take that back. You are a pain in my ass."

"Ah, but how you love it!" Gryfe calls as he walked backwards towards his own section, the one allotted to sixteen-year-old boys.

With a roll of my eyes, I holler back across the roar of the crowd, "Of course, I wouldn't have you any other way…except for maybe as a mute!"

I see his shoulders shake with laughter, but the sound is lost in the loud testing of the microphone on stage. I have to stifle a groan at the squeaky voice, thick with the Capital accent, that sounds over the loudspeaker.

"Ahem. Ahem. ExCUSE me! ExCUSE me!"

The eyes of eleven thousand people, the population of District 8, come to rest on the peculiar blue figure that is perched at the front of the stage. Truly, no matter how many times I have seen this man, my District's escort, I cannot help but marvel at his outlandish appearance. He is, for lack of a better term, vertically challenged with a long beakish nose and a vibrant puff of electric blue hair. His name is befitting: Indigo Coblatz.

Indigo gives the microphone a few light taps. "Yes? Yes, hello? Puh-lease settle down. The reaping is about to begin."

We reluctantly quiet as the District is not keen on being dealt punishment for any unruly behavior. Just as the anthem begins, I am ambushed from the side nearly causing me to run into the ginger girl to my left.

My attacker clings to me, whispering a shaky, "Sorry, I'm late. Lost my shoes. I thought the Peacekeeper that trailed me on the way here would kidnap me for sure."

I give a barely perceivable nod, and the jittery girl that hung on me pulls back to reveal a familiar face. More than a familiar face, really. An identical face. With pale skin smattered in a light covering of freckles and chartreuse eyes. The face of my sister, my twin.

Catching sight of a Peacekeeper that sees overly interested in our section, I snap at my twin. "Quiet, Verity. You are drawing attention to us."

"Oh!" She peeps, shifting herself away from me.

In silence the whole of District 8 watches as the two most important members of our people ascend the stage to take their designated seats beside Indigo, the mayor and the latest winner in our District. As soon as the anthem concludes, Mayor Paylor rises to read the treaty of the districts and the former Hunger Games winners of 8. District 8 is not a completely hopeless case. In the last seventy years, our District has turned out nine winners. Exactly two are still living. This leads me to the last member of the trio on stage, Cecilia Parima. She had won the games thirteen years ago when she was seventeen, and now she sits in the chair furthest from the crowd, a hand pressed to her heavily pregnant belly. Without my noticing, Mayor Paylor had begrudgingly retaken her seat, her face set in an unforgiving glower, and Indigo was hurriedly lowering the microphone to be level with his lips. I do catch the mild smirk Mayor Paylor exhibits at his predicament. A semblance of a smile lay on my own lips; I have always been rather fond of the mayor.

"Well, is this not exciting?" Indigo's voice reaches a squawky trill at the end of his sentence. "Once again it is time for a drawing! Ladies first, of course."

Somehow Laeda's hand finds its way to mine, and she clutches it in a stone vice. I respond by threading my fingers with hers. The palm of her hand is slick with anxious sweat, clammy at best. I can tell she takes comfort in the dry, warm state of my own hand as both of our eyes trail to the slip of paper that is now balanced in the fingertips of Indigo Coblatz.

Blood rushes to my face as the name of our District's girl is squealed out in a voice far too cheerful for this grave occasion. My grip on Laeda's hand goes slack while her's grows stronger, grasping onto me as if I am the one thing that holds her to this world. I recall the words that my younger brother had spoken to me several mornings ago: "It won't be you." Rouen's intuition had been infallible. It is not my name on that ominous white slip. Nor is it Laeda's. A silent dread falls over the crowd as the impact of the name weighs heavily on our hearts.

For the name that is called is Maeve Havenscale.


End file.
